David G. Hartwell
David G. Hartwell is an editor at Tor Books, as well as
being a highly-respected author in his own right. He wrote Age of Wonders (1984), and has been
editor/anthologizer of such works as The Dark Descent,
Masterpieces of Fantasy and Enchantment, Northern Stars
(with Glenn Grant), and the new annual volume, Year's Best SF.

Kathryn Cramer
Kathryn Cramer is co-editor (with David G. Hartwell)
of Spirits of Christmas (1989) and Walls of Fear (1990).
Her story, "The End of Everything" (1990), appeared in Asimov's SF magazine.

Every now and then, someone in the genre publishing industry comes up
with a grandiose idea. Either sitting over cappuccino in some overly
artsy little cafe where everyone is clad head to toe in black or slobbed
out in grubbies huddled around the dinner table over decaf, it doesn't
really matter. "Let's collect the greatest works of science
fiction/fantasy/horror/mystery/etc. and release a big fat book that
will be truly definitive," one says to another.

In most cases the idea never blossoms into a plan and for those that do
bear fruit, most, in the immortal words of Bart Simpson, suck. It's a
credit to David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, editors of
Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF that the fruit of
their grandiose idea doesn't -- suck, that is.

One of the first things Hartwell and Cramer had to acknowledge were the
reasons behind the failure of the various other collections (I could name
them but they know who they are) that have attempted to quantify the genre.
These publications all failed for the same reason: omission. They had to
accept that collecting Science Fiction as an entity required an ability to
address all its various sub-genres: space opera, cyberpunk, hard SF, soft SF,
dark SF, humorous SF, gay/lesbian SF, erotic SF, etc., ad nauseum
infinitum. Needless to say, this demands the commitment of a great many
pages and this is primarily where those other, unnamed "definitive"
anthologies have stubbed their collective toes.

All the successful anthologies in today's publishing industry limit themselves,
sometimes severely. They are open only to stories that have won significant
awards, like the The Year's Best SF and triennial Hugos anthologies, or
cyberpunk stories like Mirrorshades, or...well, who can name them all?

Hartwell and Cramer got around this by planning more than one book. The
first, Visions of Wonder edited by Hartwell and Milton Wolf, covered SF on a more general basis.

Another area of contention for those
toe-stubbing, falling-down-on-the-job-and-just-generally-sucking-failure-anthologies
is the taste of the editors in question. What makes the cut as important or
significant is largely a measure of personal likes and dislikes and, in some
cases, limited to this or that era when the editors in question could keep
up with the industry. The time when one person could read every important
piece of writing in a year is long past. James Blish was an important figure
in early science fiction and it's a tragedy that many readers' only exposure
to him is those really bad Star Trek books based on episodes of what we now call
'the original series.' His name belongs on the table of contents of this kind
of anthology, but would you include Blish over someone like William Gibson?
Believe it or not, it's been done.

The only beef I have with this anthology, and it's not so much with
this volume of the anthology series as the series itself so far, is, of course, a missing name. Where is Harlan Ellison? Like him or hate him, surely he is one of the
more important writers of science fiction to have ever touched a
typewriter. And his not being a scientist is no excuse -- just look at
the table of contents and you'll see that. While the vast majority of
his work has to be considered sociological SF (which would certainly qualify it
for Visions of Wonder) I don't see how a piece like
"I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream" is not "the hard stuff."

Well maybe
Hartwell and crew couldn't get the reprint rights.
Perhaps something will be included in the next volume or the one after
that. One can only hope such a blight, a crime of omission, doesn't
continue to mar an otherwise brilliant effort.